


Every Christmas

by msdisdain



Category: Sherlock (TV)
Genre: Christmas, Established Relationship, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-12-03
Updated: 2016-12-03
Packaged: 2018-09-06 03:59:56
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,039
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/8734081
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/msdisdain/pseuds/msdisdain
Summary: It was the week before Christmas, and Sherlock was not doing well.





	

**Author's Note:**

> For Seasonal Fucking Cheer Ficathon prompt 15, "It’s not nice to slam the door on carol singers, and other seasonal inappropriate responses".

The past four days had not been Sherlock’s finest hours.

It had begun with him accidentally chasing a suspect through a holiday flower stall and having to pay so much money to repair the damage that he might as well have just bought himself a stall of his own.

He'd promised to take Mrs. Hudson’s Christmas cake out of the oven so she could run over and visit with Mrs. Turner, who'd broken her hip. 

He'd forgotten.

The fire department was more understanding than Mrs. Hudson was.

He'd snarled into the phone when Mummy called, and had then been guilted into spending three days at home instead of taking the train there and back on the same day.

He'd deduced a barista to tears after she'd offered him their holiday seasonal beverage, a cranberry mint mocha. (He still felt that was justified. There were no possible circumstances under which those flavors should be combined.) 

And now he'd slammed the door in the face of carol singers, five days before Christmas.

Elderly carol singers.

Who had possibly been nuns.

He was a horrible person and he didn't care. It was a horrible holiday and it had always been a horrible holiday (except once) and at that moment if he could have convinced someone to administer the proper drugs he would have gone into a medically induced coma until Boxing Day. 

He turned from the door and started to stomp his way back upstairs, imagining that each step was the face of a carol singer. Three o’clock in the afternoon was a ridiculous hour for twelve elderly nuns to be subjecting the innocent citizens of London to any music at all, let alone My Favorite Things, which wasn't even a Christmas carol.

When the doorbell rang again before he'd reached the first landing, he was glad. It turned out he had more to say.

“Only people with limited imaginations, which is almost everyone, wrap their Christmas gifts in brown paper and tie them with string,” he said loudly, grabbing the door handle to fling it open. “And it is ludicrous to imagine that thoughts alone, even of one’s dubiously satisfying favorite things, can ease the pain of a dog’s…” The door swung wide.

“...bite,” he managed to finish while facing not a dozen irate religious sisters, but John Watson.

“Modern medicine would concur,” John said lightly, shifting back and forth on the soles of his feet. “I forgot my keys.”

Sherlock blinked once, twice. “John. I thought you were…”

“Maria Von Trapp?”

"Nuns.”

“Nuns?” John’s brow furrowed, and then he looked alarmed. “I saw a group of nuns down the block, from the cab window. Were they…”

“Carol singers,” Sherlock muttered. 

John groaned. “Sherlock. I was in Swansea for four days.” He hitched his duffle higher on his shoulder and Sherlock stood aside to let him enter. They climbed the stairs in silence, and when John got his first look at the flat, his heart sank. He let the duffle slide to the floor and then he turned and reached for Sherlock, cupping his face in his hands and looking at him more closely. “I knew I should have made you come with me.”

“John, I am perfectly capable of being on my own for--”

“Sshh.” John laid a finger over Sherlock’s mouth and then replaced it with his lips, tears prickling behind his eyes as Sherlock’s breath hitched and his arms closed tight around John’s back. They kissed for long moments, John trying to soothe as best as he could, before pulling back and cupping Sherlock’s face in his hands. “I knew I shouldn't have gone. I knew when we said goodbye, and I knew every time you texted me. I changed my ticket and skipped the last half day,” he said, rubbing his thumbs gently over Sherlock’s cheekbones. “I'm sorry, love.” 

John pressed a lingering kiss to Sherlock’s forehead before looking again at their little tree, which they'd decorated the night before John had left. They'd stayed up far too late and had far too much nog, and the placement of each ornament had been debated about at length. There had been a long break after John discovered Sherlock moving all the ornaments he'd hung, and tackled him to the sofa.

They'd been distracted for about forty minutes on that alone.

Now, however, the tree stood listless, unlit and mostly covered up by a sheet. The stockings they'd hung on the mantel were gone, as was the Santa hat Sherlock had put on the skull. Even the bright red and green throw John had tossed over the sofa had vanished.

John turned back to Sherlock and took his hands. “I'll never leave you alone at Christmastime again, alright?” Sherlock opened his mouth, and then, to John’s astonishment, he closed it and simply nodded. John kissed the back of each hand in turn, and then squeezed them hard, swallowing down the lump in this throat and his guilt and forcing brightness into his tone. “Okay. We have five days until Christmas, so let's be completely ridiculous, yeah?” 

“John, you don't have to--”

“Shut up. Okay?” He curled a hand around the nape of Sherlock’s neck. “I want to. I want to spend this Christmas with you, and every Christmas. I want to go to the market in Hyde Park and have cocoa and pick out something extravagant for Mrs. Hudson. I want to get our picture taken with Santa and see the lights at Kew Gardens and take you to the Nutcracker and bake cookies. I want to snog you under the lights on Oxford Street and buy a ridiculous hamper at Fortnum and Mason and come back here and eat everything in it, just us.”

Sherlock wrapped his arms around John’s back and buried his face in his neck, and they stood in the middle of the sitting room for a long time. “Okay,” he finally mumbled. “Let's do that.”

John held him tighter. “It'll be us, every Christmas.”

“Okay.”

“I love you.”

Sherlock just nodded into his neck, but John knew what it meant as well as he knew that he would never leave Sherlock alone in December, ever again.

After all, it wasn't fair to the nuns.


End file.
